The budget shutdown that wounded the Republican brand last week also inflicted pain on the GOP in Florida: The party lost a seat held for decades by Republicans, and Gov. Rick Scott was hit with a hurdle to his reelection strategy.

The governor has spent the last six months distancing himself from his February decision to embrace taking $51 billion from the federal government to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and the disastrous enrollment rollout appeared to help Republicans keep the issue from returning in the next legislative session.

The government shutdown and looming threat of default have pitted House conservatives against the Republican Party's traditional allies in the business community. Populist Tea Partiers driven by ideology care little for the pleas for sanity from banking lobbyists and the Chamber of Commerce; indeed, they wear their disregard for Big Business as a badge of honor.

Where does that leave the Koch brothers? The billionaire industrialists have funded a sprawling empire of libertarian-conservative activism; they've been dubbed the bankrollers of the Tea Party. Liberals frequently accuse them of seeking deregulatory policies to further their company's financial interests. But what happens when the Tea Party's ideological warfare threatens to plunge the U.S. economy into chaos?

The Justice Department will file suit against North Carolina on Monday, charging that the Tar Heel State’s new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls violates the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against African-Americans, according to a person familiar with the planned litigation.

Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce the lawsuit at noon at Justice Department headquarters, flanked by the three U.S. attorneys from North Carolina.

An appeals court in Austin, Texas, have overturned the money laundering conviction of former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

The 3rd Texas Court of Appeals formally acquitted DeLay of all charges, finding that prosecutors used "legally insufficient" evidence to convict him in 2010 of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Prosecutors accused DeLay of attempting to influence the 2002 election in Texas by funneling corporate money to candidates through his political action committee, Texans for a Republican Majority.

An Arlington, Va.-based conservative group, whose existence until now was unknown to almost everyone in politics, raised and spent $250 million in 2012 to shape political and policy debate nationwide.

The group, Freedom Partners, and its president, Marc Short, serve as an outlet for the ideas and funds of the mysterious Koch brothers, cutting checks as large as $63 million to groups promoting conservative causes, according to an IRS document to be filed shortly.

In a brief speech at the AFL-CIO convention, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) rocked the crowd by taking on the Koch brothers, and the corporate owned and operated conservative Supreme Court majority.

Sen. Warren called the Supreme Court conservative majority among the top ten pro-corporate justices of the last half century, and said, “You follow this pro-corporate trend to its logical conclusion, and sooner or later you’ll end up with a Supreme Court that functions as a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Business.”